pstarr wrote:kub, your question is meaningless. As is the answer. You asked it of yourself.
As I said previously we have empirical data that contradicts those studies. Therefore said studies must be flawed or limited somehow. The planet is warmer and plants take up more, not less CO2. It is your task to determine why or how your studies are flawed. It is not my job.
You are misunderstanding something here pstarr. The studies I am linking to refer to the rate plants/soil uptake/discharge co2. And they are telling us that plants/soil discharge more co2 the warmer it gets. The empirical data you point to measures the amount of plants on the planet. And it tells us that the amount of plants has increased. There is no contradiction here. Plants/soils can discharge co2 at a higher rate at higher temperatures and at the same time we can have more plant cover on the globe. The total amount of co2 taken up by plants can still increase even if the rate decreases slightly because there are more of them.
Unfortunately, this is not the panacea to global warming you make it out to be. For one thing, the net increase in plants absorbing more CO2 is far too small to keep up with the increases in CO2 emissions. IE, we are belching out CO2 far faster than this increased plant cover can absorb. For another, much of this greening is happening as snow and ice melt. Snow and ice deflect heat. Vegetation absorbs it. IE, it might slow global warming via the greenhouse effect a bit. However it could also make global warming increase by changing the albedo of the planet(greenery absorbs more heat than snow and ice).
The planet is getting greener while global warming slows. But it comes with worrying caveats. For starters, the effect may not last as increased temperatures dampen plant growth and rainfall patterns change. Also, much of the greening has occurred in cold regions previously blanketed in snow. And while snow and ice reflect solar energy away from the planet, vegetation absorbs it, increasing land surface temperatures. Finally, the effect is simply too small to keep up with emissions. “Unfortunately,” says Keenan, the increased carbon uptake by plants “is nowhere near enough to stop climate change.”
Greening the Planet: The Fertilizer Effect of CO2 Slows Warming“From this research, we can see these plants can help absorb some carbon dioxide, but there’s still a lot of carbon dioxide staying in the atmosphere.” In fact, during that decade, a total of 60 billion tons of carbon was added to the atmosphere.
“We know that the ice is melting in the north and it’s being replaced by vegetation. As permafrost melts and ice cover decreases, it’s replaced by vegetation.” Things get worse. Verchot says this type of vegetation in the north actually worsens climate change. “It’s going to have a negative impact because vegetation in the north is dark and absorbs more heat.” It creates what we call a positive feedback: something that reinforces the current climate forces that we have going on.” This is called the Albedo effect, and it’s bad news.
“We need to understand things for what they really are,” Verchot said. “The devil is in the details. “The big thing that people could take away from this study is that even if vegetation is increasing, it doesn’t mean we are solving problems,” he warned. “It could be a sign that things are getting worse.”
Planet Earth is actually getting greener — but that might not be a good thing
The oil barrel is half-full.